Today ATI Technologies announced new RADEON X800 (R420) architecture and RADEON X800 XT and RADEON X800 PRO video processors. In this article we are going to test them against their primary rival, NV40 from NVIDIA in 25 contemporary gaming benchmarks. Find out who the winner is!

Halo: Combat Evolved

Performance numbers of the world’s most powerful graphics cards in Halo: Combat Evolved game seem to be limited by central processor, as there is only a very tiny speed change when going from 1024x768 to 1600x1200 resolutions. However, the GeForce 6800 Ultra from NVIDIA is capable of outdistancing the RADEON X800 XT from ATI in this title.

Maybe speed results for Halo with full-scene antialiasing and anisotropic filtering enabled would give more adequate results, but unfortunately the game does not support these capabilities because of the nature of its engine that renders the image into a special buffer where additional special effects are added and only then sends it to frame-buffer.